UN Agency Finds No Chemical Weapons at US-Attacked Syrian Facilities

Moscow, Apr 25 (Prensa Latina) The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) reportedly visited a research center in Barzeh, in the vicinity of Damascus, that was attacked by the US and found no traces of chemical weapons as the Trump Administration claimed.

The information was confirmed by Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the Russian General Staff Col. Gen. Sergey Rudskoy, who also said that the OPCW in its fact-finding mission had free access to visit last week a site in Douma, Eastern Ghouta, to collect samples in connection with the alleged April 7 chemical attack by the Syrian Army.

In relation with the Barzeh center whose main task is pharmacological research, the officer further noted that thousands of people could have died if there was any chemical weapon on the sites that were attacked by the US and its allies France and United Kingdom.

“Immediately after the attack, many people who worked at these destroyed facilities and bystanders without any protective equipment visited them. None of them were poisoned with toxic agents,” Rudskoy was quoted as saying by Sputnik News and other Russian media.

He said the logic of strikes on alleged facilities with toxic agents in Syria was unclear, because if toxic agents had theoretically been stored there, tens of thousands of people would have died after the cruise missile strikes. On the combined US-UK-France airstrikes in Syria, the General stressed that intelligence data shows that Osa, Kvadrat, Buk, Strela-10, Pantsir and S-125 air defense systems destroyed 46 cruise missiles during the recent aggression.

Rudskoy added that only 13 of 76 reported missiles hit targets near the Barzeh research center in Syria. In all, the US and its allies launched 105 air-to surface rockets.